Transport in Europe is responsible for damaging levels of air pollutants and a quarter of EU greenhouse gas emissions. Many of the resulting environmental problems can be addressed by stepping up efforts to meet new EU targets, according to the latest report from the European Environment Agency (EEA).

For the first time ever the European Commissions is proposing a greenhouse gas emissions target for transport. But how is transport going to provide the services that our society needs while minimising its environmental impacts? This is the theme for the Transport White Paper launched in 2011. TERM 2011 and future reports aim to deliver an annual assessment on progress towards these targets by introducing the Transport and Environment Reporting Mechanism Core Set of Indicators (TERM-CSI). TERM 2011 provides also the baseline to which progress will be checked against, covering most of the environmental areas, including energy consumption, emissions, noise and transport demand. In addition, this report shows latest data and discuss on the different aspects that can contribute the most to minimise transport impacts. TERM 2011 applies the avoid-shift-improve (ASI) approach, introduced in the previous TERM report, analysing ways to optimise transport demand, obtain a more sustainable modal split or use the best technology available.

Green indicates faster growth in GDP than in transport while red indicates stronger growth in transport than in GDP. Figure 1 shows a large increase in freight tkm in 2004. This is due to a change in the methodology used to calculate the estimates for this year. (see metadata for more details) The main reason is that countries had to harmonise their surveys with the EU legislation,
Freight transport demand is defined as the amount of inland tonnes-kilometre travelled every year in the EEA32. Inland freight transport includes transport by road, rail and inland waterways. The current version of the indicators is based on inland transport only. Although statistics on sea transport are already well developed, due to their predominantly international nature, there are conceptual difficulties in dealing with these modes in a manner consistent with the inland modes.
Data from Lichtenstein is not included as it was not available as part of the dataset .The ratio of annual growth of inland freight transport to GDP, measured in 2000 prices, determines the amount of coupling between GDP and transport. The decoupling indicator, depicted by the green bars, is calculated as unity minus the coupling ratio; so a positive score indicates decoupling (i.e. transport demand grows less slowly than GDP), with a negative score showing the opposite (i.e. transport demand outpaces GDP growth).

Trends in air passenger transport demand and GDP. The two curves show the development in GDP and air passenger transport volumes, while the columns show the level of annual decoupling. Green indicates faster growth in GDP than in transport while red indicates stronger growth in transport than in GDP.
Aviation passenger demand data are provisional estimates from the European Commission DG MOVE for domestic and intra-EU27 aviation. GDP data for Lichtenstein is not included as it is not available.
The ratio of annual growth of passenger transport to GDP, measured in 2000 prices, determines the amount of coupling between GDP and transport. The decoupling indicator, depicted by the green bars, is calculated as unity minus the coupling ratio; so a positive score indicates decoupling (i.e. transport demand grows less slowly than GDP), with a negative score showing the opposite (i.e. transport demand outpaces GDP growth)